Hunter and Prey
by JME2
Summary: Some time after his escape, Dr. Hannibal Lecter makes his way Gotham City for one reason and one reason alone: The Batman


Batman created by Bob and a registered character of DC Comics. Hannibal Lecter created by Thomas Harris and owned by Universal Pictures. I own the story and any original characters. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
Hunter and Prey: Part I  
  
Gotham City.  
  
Millionaire Bruce Wayne, head of the generous Wayne Enterprises, had once described the city as an anvil upon which "one is broken and tempered," undoubtedly based on the horrific experience he had suffered by losing his parents in Gotham City's notorious "Crime Alley" that so many were familiar with.  
  
Many had called it the ugliest city in the world, all sharp angles and rigid planes, black against a sky that had never seen blue, a sky that itself seems to trap light from the streets below it and transform it into something wan and dingy. To those with adequate intelligence, it was a city founded upon the swampy soils of slow and inexorable moral decay.  
  
To the innocent, it was a not a heaven, but a living hell. To the insane, it was an overripe fruit, just begging to bear the brunt of their violent acts and mischief. To the city's defenders, namely the police and the costumed vigilantes that continually prowled its crime infested streets, it was the struggle to maintain order and justice where there was none..  
  
But to Dr. Hannibal Lecter M.D., it was nothing more than a possible playing field for the trials to come…  
  
The Doctor allowed himself a brief smile as he carefully maneuvered his leased XJR Jaguar supercharged sedan down the narrow, mean streets of Gotham City. At the traffic light, he paused a moment for a simple precaution: the locking of the Jaguar's doors. It was not as if he feared the ruffians and marauders that plagued the streets of Gotham.  
  
After all, he had survived the horrors of a Nazi-occupied Europe as well as the wrath of Dr. Frederick Chilton-  
  
Lecter smiled again. Correction, the LATE Dr. Frederick Chilton of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. In many ways, it had been rather unfortunate that his jailor had also been in the Caribbean on vacation at the same time Lecter had. It was also rather unfortunate that no one would ever find poor Dr. Chilton's body, as unrecognizable as it undoubtedly was in its current state.  
  
But where was I? Ah yes…  
  
In any event, Hannibal was not really fearful of anything that Gotham City could throw at him, save for some of its more infamous lunatics. After all, Lecter had studied and mastered several forms of the defense arts. And if worse came to worse, there was always the striped-down crossbow that the good doctor carried in his jacket. The variety of prey in Gotham was unique, almost…  
  
No.  
  
Now was not the time to engage in any of his interests, as tempting as it was. No, it was better to be on the defensive than the offensive. To be honest, there was some minor risks in coming into Gotham City. The reward posted for the capture of Dr. Lecter was still in place and showed little sign of being lifted. Then there were, of course, the close shaves he had had with greedy glory seekers seeing the value of brining him in after his escape.   
  
And of course, there was the police. But once again, it was not as if the Gotham City Police Department was a threat. To Lecter's trained eye, corruption and vice ran rampant in the GCPD. If the rumors were at all true, there were only a handful of honest officers in place in the city, including the well renowned Commissioner James Gordon whom Lecter had met while Gordon had been part of the Chicago police department.  
  
But then again, life was also full of risks. The doctor had taken a risk when he had assaulted former FBI agent William Graham, shortly before his capture. He had taken a risk when he had escaped from Federal custody, adding five more lives to his known killings in the process. In many ways, taking risks was part of his trade, given now that he was a fugitive…  
  
He leaned back in the driver's seat, taking in the softness and texture and odor of the leather. As he turned on the next corner, he mused on to why exactly he had come here of all places. Well, there were several reasons for coming to Gotham City, two reasons to be precise. The first was an item that had originally been slated for auction at Sotheby's in New York but had accidentally wound up here in Gotham.  
  
It was a tall antique mirror from the eighteenth century, slightly smoky and crazed. It had come from the Chateau Vaux-le-Vicomte, a rarity given the plundering so common to the ancient French manors following the Revolution of the 1790's.God only knew what it had seen in the course of the last three hundred years. Lecter himself had considered acquiring the piece shortly before the Bureau's Behavioral Science division had come knocking on his door ten years earlier, shortly before his rather inconvenient incarceration in the dungeon.  
  
The second reason involved something more native to Gotham, something more…  
  
Something got Dr. Lecter's attention, a rare event in itself to those who had interviewed the doctor while he had been in federal custody. The good doctor suddenly looked up through the windshield and immediately turned his sleek vehicle into a parking space.  
  
He exited the Jaguar and slowly looked up at the gothic styled building across from the parking lot. Any casual onlooker would wonder why the doctor was so engaged in observing the Gotham City Police Station.  
  
Or rather, at the glowing signal emitting like a beacon in the darkness from the police station's rooftop. It was the Batsignal, the police's method of summoning the masked vigilante known as the Batman.  
  
Lecter smiled. He would never admit it, but while in Federal custody, he had acquired numerous psychological reports that had been written on the Guardian of Gotham. Many believed that the so called Dark Knight was as unhinged and insane as the various criminals he had brought to justice.  
  
But such villains with rather colorful names such as the Joker, Two-Face, Bane, the Scarecrow, the Riddler, and all of the others on the rather long list did not matter to Lecter. The Batman, however, did.  
  
The Caped Crusader, in many ways, was like dear old Clarice Starling to Hannibal: Enigmatic, unreadable, almost certainly a wild card in one degree or another.  
  
A wild card that when Hannibal Lecter was finished during his time here in Gotham City, would not remain wild for very long…  
  
To be continued… 


End file.
